Founder jam sessions: A new way forward.

A friend approached me with an idea, a “jam session”. We get together, and spend 2.5 hours on his biggest challenge, 2.5 hours on mine.

I was a “hell yes”, so a few days ago he drove up and we did this.

Here are my takeaways from our first of many to come:

Spending time with other founders is valuable not just for tackling work challenges, but life challenges too. We understand the unique interrelational struggles and dynamics with our friends and families that non-founders don't always understand.
We each have knowledge and insights that may seem obvious to us but aren't to others. That is, we all have something to offer and we are more valuable than we think.
As founders, we can get overwhelmed with options, but need to constantly remind ourselves of our end goal, and stay focused as much as possible.
It's so easy to procrastinate the hard things. Working in tandem on each others' challenges provides a combination of comfort and accountability for tackling the hard stuff. Together.
When we find ourselves putting something off, it's likely the one thing we should prioritize.
Sometimes we waffle even on decisions we know aren't important, in which case it helps to ask someone we trust to decide for us.
Asking a question out loud can give us the answer before we finish the question.
Know when to say yes. Know when to say no.
Create more processes to remove decision-making. "Follow the script". (But don't spend all your time creating processes.)
An objective opinion can get us out of our heads and reveal our blind spots.
We don't need a single mentor - we need founder friends, each of whom can be our mentor in their own way.

I highly recommend you reach out to someone and do the same, ideally in person, but it could work over a video call too.

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